With the address of a doctor, Pollock presently emerged in Cornhill. There was no cab in sight, and so he went on down to the western end of the street, and essayed the crossing opposite the Mansion House. The crossing is hardly easy even for the expert Londoner; cabs, vans, carriages, mailcarts, omnibuses go by in one incessant stream; to any one fresh from the malarious solitudes of Sierra Leone it is a boiling, maddening confusion. But when an inverted head suddenly comes bouncing, like an india-rubber ball, between your legs, leaving distinct smears of blood every time it touches the ground, you can scarcely hope to avoid an accident. Pollock lifted his feet convulsively to avoid it, and then kicked at the thing furiously. Then something hit him violently in the back, and a hot pain ran up his arm.
He had been hit by the pole of an omnibus, and three of the fingers of his left hand smashed by the hoof of one of the horses,—the very fingers, as it happened, that he shot from the Porroh man. They pulled him out from between the horses’ legs, and found the address of the physician in his crushed hand.
For a couple of days Pollock’s sensations were full of the sweet, pungent smell of chloroform, of painful operations that caused him no pain, of lying still and being given food and drink. Then he had a slight fever, and was very thirsty, and his old nightmare came back. It was only when it returned that he noticed it had left him for a day.
“If my skull had been smashed instead of my fingers, it might have gone altogether,” said Pollock, staring thoughtfully at the dark cushion that had taken on for the time the shape of the head.
Pollock at the first opportunity told the physician of his mind trouble. He knew clearly that he must go mad unless something should intervene to save him. He explained that he had witnessed a decapitation in Dahomey, and was haunted by one of the heads. Naturally, he did not care to state the actual facts. The physician looked grave.
Presently he spoke hesitatingly. “As a child, did you get very much religious training?”
“Very little,” said Pollock.
A shade passed over the physician’s face. “I don’t know if you have heard of the miraculous cures—it may be, of course, they are not miraculous—at Lourdes.”
“Faith-healing will hardly suit me, I am afraid,” said Pollock, with his eye on the dark cushion.
The head distorted its scarred features in an abominable grimace. The physician went upon a new track. “It’s all imagination,” he said, speaking with sudden briskness. “A fair case for faith-healing, anyhow. Your nervous system has run down, you’re in that twilight state of health when the bogles come easiest. The strong impression was too much for you. I must make you up a little mixture that will strengthen your nervous system—especially your brain. And you must take exercise.”